Thursday, March 3, 2016

Fragment: A terrible teacher

Fragment from: Kramer, Samuel Noah. In the World of Sumer. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986.

Pedagogically speaking Peobel was a terrible teacher, no better in some ways than my Talmud teachers of yeshivah days who chose to teach the laws of divorce before those of marriage. But in other respects he was stimulating and inspiring, at least for me - and I was at times the only one attending his classes. His speech was rather slow and monotonous; his English was far from idiomatic; he was given to numerous and prolonged digressions and tended to be repetitive and diffuse. But none of these pedagogical failings were defects as far as I was concerned. Not blessed with a quick mind or a superior memory, I found that Poebel's repetitions, digressions, and obiter dicta were just what I needed to help me understand and digest the principles of Sumerian grammar underlying the intricate and often misleading cuneiform system of writing, as well as the methodology of transforming the dead inscriptions into living informants.

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The History of the Study of Antiquity through the Lens of Autobiography Blog

This blog is a component of a research project initiated by Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities, Pennsylvania State University Libraries, who has a long standing interest in the history of the study of the Ancient Near East and Egypt, and of old world Antiquity more generally. This blog will present the working bibliography of the project, and provide a platform for comment and discussion of autobiographical writing by students and scholars of the ancient world.

I hope also to develop a venue for the publication of new autobiographical essays in the form of an online open access periodical.